Search by POST method–A small research

This post is based on a small research I have done on Mozilla Firefox Search Plug-in.

The research started with the study of cookies stored by Mozilla Firefox and moved towards building the Mozilla Firefox Search Plug-in for my blog. My research is not finished yet but still I would like to share an opportunity I found testing these Search Plug-ins.

While exploring these search plug-ins I noted that every search plug-in is using GET method to send the search query to Search Engine. It seems fine to me as it is just a search so using POST method to send the request doesn’t make a sense to me, but then I thought other way – What would happen if POST method is used to send the request to server. I got curious about this and start to edit the properties of these plug-ins. I have tested multiple search plugins to see how corresponding search engines handles the request sent by POST method and found these three different behaviours:

Google: Google was first search plug-in I tested. When I sent search request to Google using POST Method, I got an error page like this:

It seems appropriate. Google doesn’t serve any search request being send by POST Method but then a question is raised - does a non technical user really understand what is POST method? For eg.: My wife doesn’t know this terminology and she will definitely call me for help if she get such error from the Google.

(See the Error Code 405. I have not seen this error earlier. So my research also helped me to find a new error message )

Yahoo: The next search engine was Yahoo. Initially I thought that Yahoo will give the same result as given by Google but it proved me wrong. To my surprise Yahoo has given the result for the search query I sent using POST method.

Bing: The third major search plugin which I tested was Bing – A Microsoft Product. I love my job because it surprises me and it surprises me daily. Till now I have tested two major search engines Google and Yahoo dealing with the request sent using POST method and both of them have given me different results. Once again I was guessing the result before testing. Based on my two previous results I was thinking that Bing should either display the error message or it should display the search result. I have not thought of any other result but surprisingly, Bing has given some unexpected result:

Instead of displaying search results or any error, it has opened Bing Search Engine.

I have tested for few other search plugins for different search engine but result are more of the same as these three. Now, question is which search engine has served the user’s request properly: Google, Yahoo or Bing. Think as a tester, Think as a developer and Think as an end user.

Post me your answers with the reason in Comments section, we can have a good discussion on it.

How popular websites irritate their clients?

To make a product successful, promotion of the product is always needed. Good Promotion of a bad product can also make the product successful. But sometimes bad promotion strategy can also irritate the users which ultimately puts negative impact on success of the product.

Recently I was checking my mails on yahoo.com when a green box started to appear on the top of the page. It was about access the Yahoo! Toolbar from more than one location.

First, I don't have Yahoo! Toolbar on my system, so this message should not display to me.

Also, I don’t want to install the Toolbar but there was no way to do so. There were only two options:

          • Either I add the toolbar with my Yahoo! ID

          • Or Save it to the computer

When I clicked the cross on the upper corner, the box is closed but appeared again after few second. I tried many times but the green box opens every time. Remember, last time when I wanted to install yahoo messenger on my system, it always failed :) and now when I don’t want to add the Toolbar, they were forcing me to add it.

Anyway I clicked on the ‘Learn more’ given in the box to learn how to close this box. See what I found:

Interestingly I was using Firefox and it was suggesting me how to get rid off from this box on Internet Explorer. What the purpose of user manual if user can’t find appropriate help?

At last, I decided to logout from my yahoo account rather than trying to close that irritating green box.

Any Comments?

Emotional Bug

How do you feel when someone laughs on you while you are installing an application and unsuccessful every time?

You will get irritated by this, right.

Either developers at yahoo don’t think so or they have missed an emotional bug. You might be surprising with the term Emotional bug. Actually I have coined the term Emotional bug.

The bugs which can hurt the feelings of a user can be called as Emotional Bug.

Let me display you an example which I found. I was trying to install the yahoo messenger but due to some technical issues, I was unable to install it successfully. On completing the installation process, I got the following message.

Did you notice the image of emoticon on the message box? It’s a smiling emoticon for unsuccessful installation. It seems they are happy about the unsuccessful installation.

This might not be an issue for many of you. Most of you may think this is just an image but “Images are more expressive than words.” What say?